Eric Trump on Wednesday said crypto can “declare victory” over the banking industry, a sharp shift from his 2025 warning that banks risked becoming obsolete.
What Trump Said at Token2049
Trump claimed at the Token2049 conference in Singapore, as cited by Bloomberg, that banks spent years fighting digital assets but are now racing to adopt them.
“All of us in here beat the big banks because every single day you see another one” embracing cryptocurrency, he said.
“It’s because people dared to push back against major headwinds. And honestly, I think today we could all declare victory,” he added.
On what’s next, the World Liberty Financial (CRYPTO: WLFI) co-founder tied crypto’s growth to AI adoption rather than any crypto-specific catalyst:
- Bitcoin’s (CRYPTO: BTC) slide from its October 2025 peak of $126,000 came partly from investors shifting capital into AI stocks, Trump argued.
- That capital is now flowing back as Bitcoin trades above $80,000 again.
- He expects that money to keep rotating back and forth between the two sectors going forward, pointing to the recent price gains as early evidence of the shift.
On tokenization, Trump framed the technology as a way to open assets like luxury real estate, art and music royalties, historically reserved for wealthy investors, to everyday people.
He called it “philanthropic in terms of giving people an opportunity to invest in things that they believe in that they could have never otherwise had the opportunity to invest in.”
How His Message Has Shifted Since Last Year
At Token2049 Dubai in May 2025, Trump warned banks would get left “in the dust” if they failed to adopt crypto.
This year’s victory lap has a real example behind it, as Citigroup (NYSE:C) expanded its partnership with Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) by September 2026 to let institutional clients accept stablecoin payments.
Trump’s September 2025 forecast of a strong fourth quarter for crypto, alongside his long-standing call for Bitcoin to eventually hit $1 million, didn’t hold up as well.
The Oct. 10-11 crash wiped out more than $19 billion in leveraged positions, leaving Bitcoin roughly 20% below that level by January 2026, as Benzinga reported at the time.
Meanwhile, World Liberty’s tokenized real estate push shows the same gap between pitch and reality.
The company announced plans in February 2026 to tokenize loan-revenue interests tied to a Maldives resort, but the offering stayed limited to accredited investors rather than the general public Trump describes reaching.
Photo via Shutterstock
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